The Crisis in South Africa

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The government of South Africa still believes that whites can continue to
rule without beginning to share power with blacks. That is the clear
message of President Pieter W. Botha's several speeches since August.

Despite a year of rolling rioting that has killed nearly 900, and a state
of emergency that has exacerbated rather than calmed African townships and
race relations, President Botha's regime remains reliant upon repression,
to be followed, as he has hinted, by moderations of several important
constraints under which blacks habitually live out their years.

As the state of emergency polarized black and white, so President Botha's
speeches have widened the gulf further. His ideas are the despair of
moderate Africans, both for their combative tone and for what they fail to
say.

Whites, especially Afrikaners and the dominant National Party, are not
yet prepared to share or even to divide power. Nor can they (or anyone
sensible) contemplate partition. Yet whites are at least ready to erode
privilege and to provide reasonably equal opportunity for many blacks in
commercial and social spheres.

South Africa's ruling whites believe they can offer sufficient reform in
these broad areas to stem the tide of revolt. Such changes, after all, are
significant for whites accustomed to generations of unquestioned supremacy
and unparalleled high standards of living in a blissful climate. Mr. Botha
and colleagues also hope that the gradual enunciation of "reforms," such as
a modificaiton of the pass laws, an abridgement of influx control, and
admission of some form of common citizenship, will appease the United
States and the West.

But a year of rioting, the absence of any governmental appreciation of
what the massive violent protests mean, and the words of the President have
left politicized Africans (now the vocal majority) unwilling to be co-opted
by well-meant and beneficial social and economic changes. Africans are now
demanding to participate fully in the political restructuring of their
country. They demand negotiations, and shun being merely consulted. Whether
or not Africans would accept less than "one man, one vote," they do assume
that only political influence now matters. That is the shift that the
events of 1984-85 have wrought.

"If and when the Pretoria regime dismantles apartheid," a black Roman
Catholic priest said recently, "we will be willing to sit down and discuss
the future social order of this country." Another activist was quoted as
summing up the change in black thinking even more simply: "We don't want to
settle for half a loaf anymore. We want the whole thing."

President Botha is gambling that his immensely strong military machine,
and his weaker, stretched, but still powerful police force, can soon cordon
off the black townships and curtail the African anger that erupts from day
to day in various parts of the country.

In the past, except for 1976-77, whites have managed to limit black
violence. But today the alienation of Africans is much more widespread than
ever before and psychologically much more entrenched. Africans are every
day more numerous overall, and in urban areas. There are almost 24 million
Africans and fewer than 5 million whites, plus 2.7 million Coloreds
(peoples of mixed descent) and 800,000 Asians.

The cities, where most whites live, are dominated numerically by
Africans. Sixty-five percent of all Africans live in and around the white
population centers. And the African population is increasing twice as fast
as is the white. The economy is dependent on Africans' labor, as the strike
by black miners of gold and coal may showWe'll have to call up Rotberg
about this sentence.. No part of South Africa is exclusively white, or
able to function without integration of white and black skills, white and
black capital, and white and black cooperation.

The government has given cold comfort to black antagonists, to white
businessmen who want reconciliation and a return to national prosperity,
and to foreigners. Those in Washington who may have hoped that President
Botha would announce drastic steps to end violence misjudged their target,
as the Reagan administration policy of "constructive engagement" has
systematically done since 1981. South Africa listens to the United States,
but more so when Congress threatens to impose sanctions than when the
executive branch wrings its hands piously.

South Africa has crossed a Rubicon internally. Black patience, always
stretched, has now worn out. Thanks to the inactions of Mr. Botha's
government, the toughs of the streets have largely taken political
leadership away from the likes of Bishop Desmond Tutu, Dr. Nthato Motlana,
the Rev. Allan Boesak, and Chief Gatsha Buthelezi.

Internationally, South Africa has lost its friends as well as their
ambassadors. Its capital market and its supply of investors are slowly
drying up. Constructive engagement, writhing in the wake of South Africa's
refusal to evolve rapidly, died in the wake of Mr. Botha's address, leaving
South Africa bereft of overseas psychological support.

It is hard to think that Mr. Botha could drive South Africa deeper into
tragedy. But violence, more violence, and still further episodes of
militant protest are clearly ahead for South Africa, until President Botha
and his colleagues decide to take bold moves like prolonged negotiations
over how best to take South Africa politically into the next century.

(Editor's Note: Robert I. Rotberg is a Professor of Political Science
and History at MIT.)

(Editor's note: this column is a revised version of a piece that ran in
the Aug. 20 issue of The Christian Science Monitor.)